From 1978 giving solutions to the Oil and Gas Industry

Forewords

The
following introductory comments were made by some of the conspicuous
reservoir engineers who helped the author with the final corrections of the
original “manuscript”.

You do not know
what you see, but you see
what you know.”

Jean Piaget

Piaget’s quote
summarizes my feelings when faced with the ideas presented in this book. For
some time I had been feeling that something “was not working" when trying to
describe fluid motion in the reservoir through relative permeability curves. However,
I was not able to identify where the difficulty was.

When I went over
the differentiation made by Marcelo among injection, conduction and
production, I felt he had become aware of something that has always been in
front of our eyes but has remained unobserved. This re-evaluation of the
difference among the mentioned three concepts sheds light on a problem that has
been repeatedly glimpsed and evaded.

The most
outstanding merit of this book lies in the identification of the problem; and,
above all and for the first time, its straightforward proposal of a different
solution where formerly “only patches were placed.”

Norberto Galacho.

Really good! As the time this book
reaches readers, we will be able to assert that “Reservoir Engineering is
possible in Argentina”. It may be the end of pure empiricism exalted to
exacerbation and the beginning of an “era” among us (Reservoir Engineers), of
analysis, discussion and reflection. There is no doubt that Marcelo’s ideas will
at least cause a conflict in the analyst or reader, who will have to discuss old
paradigms and decide if a change is needed. From my point of view, the position
does not imply “not to measure” but to know “what for”, “how to measure” and
finally “how to use measurements”. That is the
challenge.

Miguel Angel Laffitte

In spite of the
fact that the relative permeability concept is deeply rooted and seems natural,
it is in fact a simple macroscopic approximation to a complex microscopic
problem. Marcelo argues more about its use or application to explain the
displacement phenomena than about the concept itself. However, it is the
starting point on the road to search for different formulations, whose
application requires only an appropriate description of the reservoir (including
all the inherent complexities) and the fluids, and not the necessarily
assumptions or simplifications, which, in general, are not applicable.

I hope and wish
this is our opportunity to start introducing a great change, which would be
feasible due to the full participation and cooperation of those people
interested in the topic.

Antonio A Paradiso

Dear readers:
Hold on! This is an amusing and clear book, however its reading is hard and not
suitable for dogmatic people. It is difficult to say how much you agree with
this book. Perhaps you discover things that you looked at years ago, but you
were unable to see; or you may disagree with others. Many times you will
be unable to say whether you agree or not, and you may need to postpone the
judgment till knowledge is consolidated.

Marcelo suggested
to “beat hard” the relative permeability curves, but he goes further. He
questions deeply rooted issues, such as numeric simulation itself. I can not say
how much I agree and I must postpone my judgment. Hold on!